[6d65]

You're right, it could be that Nvidia will push for more beefed up cortex CPUs, with the same tricks employed in m1, like larger L1/l2 caches, increasing the die size, and add more complex pipelines, put the ram on the soc, and an Nvidia gpu.

The potential problems are.

- This might take some time, if it's not already in progress. And pc manufactures might not afford lower sales for a few years while this happens.

- Windows seems to still have issues with app portability and emulation. But who knows, maybe MS will push harder

- Making their own chips and also licensing cores to vendors like Qualcomm, might spook them. It's not a good position to compete with someone who owns the IP you depend one. This might be a good thing for RISC-V

But we'll find out in a year or two what is the play. Competition is good for everyone. That's why I don't like apple having exclusive access to new nodes, be it because apple is willing to pay premium, or that other companies avoid low yield.

Anyway, seems like TSMC will have their hands full for a few cycles.

[azangru]

> And pc manufactures might not afford lower sales for a few years while this happens.

What do you mean? What other options do they have?

[6d65]

The other option is to use the best available x86 mobile CPUs, and these at the moment seem to be from AMD.

From what I've seen even current AMD CPUs are competitive with M1. Ryzen 4900HS has a fair lead in multicore performance and close single threaded. Of course, all this at a higher power and fans running as a jet engine.

But AMD is one process node behind, and one architectural node behind their desktops (Zen 2 on 7nm).

So, OEMs can use the perf gains from both the advancements to lower the TDP a bit,(ex 10%), put a larger battery. And this can result in a competitive product, even with the rumored M1X, since Ryzens already have the multicore lead.

That being said, from I read, the next mobile Ryzens will be 5000 series, released in a month, at 7nm. So only a ~20% IPC uplift is expected. Also probably TSMC's 7nm improved a bit. Nothing to scoff at, but not as exciting as a new process node.

Anyway, we'll see soon enough.